Charlottesville restaurant reviews and food news

Food Find: Ni Hao’s Ma Po Tofu

The sign of a truly authentic Chinese dish is when the tofu comes with meat sauce. We recently hit up Ni Hao on the corner (the new Chinese with some Thai restaurant in the old Ethopian Messob space) and asked the waitress about the Ma Po Tofu. “Very healthy choice,” she assured us. Which we felt good about. And then when it arrived in a thick gravy of meat bits drowning those healthy chunks of tofu, we felt even better about it. The tofu, pork, hot peppers, and scallions dish was beyond delicious. The tangy hot flavor was perfectly punctuated with szechuan pepper. If you haven’t had szechuan peppers before, they’re fascinating. They look like harmless peppercorns but actually explode in a numbing stun gun to the mouth (in a good way). We shoveled just enough rice in to balance the spice and filled our mouths with tofu meat gravy goodness. Healthy choice for the soul!